The Hummel Quest Tales: Siren
by autophagy
Summary: The E25 dreams of his past. Oneshot. Ignore the genre, I had literally no idea what to put there. [These stories are a series of bits and pieces of background stories for the characters of my main story (The Hummel Quest), so they won't make a lot of sense on their own.]


[After a talk about character backstories I felt super inspired to write something about tank gladiator arenas, and we spontaneously decided that Siren was part of them before he met Tate and Fang. It's unlikely that I add more chapters to this, but if I ever come up with something, I'll keep this a Tales story just in case. This hasn't been betaread.]

He was running.

The crowd was cheering, bloodlust in the air like a thick fog.

And he was running; running for his life.

A shell tore through the building that he had just left behind, missing him barely and burying itself deep in the ground. He made a sharp turn, swerved to the left. Shot past one of the three Löwes that appeared in front of him as he burst through a row of bushes.

The E25 passed the other tank faster than it could turn its turret. He turned back immediately, did a u-turn and drove into the heavy's rear. The Löwe had finished traversing, but could only depress his cannon so far. It crashed down on top of the smaller tank's fighting compartment, scraped across it uselessly. He couldn't get a proper angle. Siren's muzzle on the other hand was pressed flush against the Löwe's thinly armored rear, and he fired as many shells as he could. Only when the heavy tank was motionless and the crowd was raving, he backed up.

There was no time to admire his work - a shot hit him in the side, he winced in pain. He raced off again before the second Löwe could reload.

The Loudspeakers announced that he had scored a drove behind a small building and took a deep breath. There were no engine noises nearby, but his own engine felt like it was about to jump out of its hatch. He felt fear, but the exhilarating kind. The crowd chanted, demanding his death. He grinned.

'Looks like they don't like me anymore' he thought.

But he wasn't going to die so easily.

The grin turned into liberating laughter. The sudden feeling of being spotted made him throw an anxious look over his fender. The Löwe was right there.

'My medal...' was the last thing Siren thought before he...woke up.

He smiled drowsily.'Almost got me, you bastard...' he thought, 'Didn't ya.'  
Sometimes he almost wished himself back to these fights. The hungry crowd, the use of his special talent - the cruelty that was required to survive in the arena. But then again, there was something that kept him tied to his current life. A certain Ferdinand he had met back then. He had caught the E25's optic right away. He didn't hide, took care of his opponents with cold precision and no signs of fear or hesitation - even low tiers that every tank was taught not to hurt.

The more he saw of the Ferdinand, the more he had started to admire him. Siren wasn't one for strategy; he liked to improvise - but he could recognize and appreciate a good tactician, who this Tate had turned out to be.

Quickly, the desire to face this newcomer had grown in him, but before that duel could have happened, Siren had had suddenly and accidentally become part of some kind of revolt, lead by no one else but the Ferdinand. At first he had been critical about it, but when senseless violence had turned out to be a vital part of said revolt, he had been all for it.

Finally free of the isolation of his cell, he had volunteered to join Tate for a platoon. He may not have gotten the chance to face off against him, but had found that fighting with him was just as good.

Even though Tate didn't like to see many of the things Siren came up with regularly, even frequent threats of leaving him behind were always only empty words. Somehow he had managed to worm his way into his platoon mates' fuel pumps, and he had figured out his freedoms that this granted him. Sometimes, he would push these freedoms shamelessly to the absolute limit...be he just couldn't help himself! Not to mention that often, Siren's talents were outright required. Every now and then, someone had to be scared or interrogated after all. As long as Tate didn't follow through with his threats, Siren would stay and continue to do the dirty work.

He raised his gaze and looked at the two sleeping tanks near him with an affectionate grin. Sometimes he wondered if they even had the slightest idea how much he liked them.

But that was enough middle-of-the-night-pondering, and he decided to try falling back asleep. It happened sooner than expected, and he fell back into his uneasy slumber.

He was running for his Covenanter didn't look back. He almost crashed as he didn't see a ledge and jumped down it. The impact caused a sharp pain to flash through his suspension, but he had no time to stop and lick his wound. He heard the laughter and screaming; he knew that he would be next.

The fight had been unfair from the very beginning, but he had hoped that he would have at least a chance against the current champion. They had even secretly agreed on a little alliance. But when his accomplice had lost his gun from a terrifyingly accurate shot, the Covenanter had lost his nerve. His QF 40mm had turned out to be useless, or at least it hadn't done enough to justify staying any longer and trading shots with someone he couldn't even see.

His biggest problem however right now was that he didn't know where to run. The arena was closed by walls on all sides, one of them he almost ran into right then as he unexpectedly reached it. He looked up where the spectators were sitting on their elevated positions, and saw nothing but disappointment and disdain on the expressions of those who were watching him. The others had their sights glued on something else; the Covenanter could see the disgusting smiles and thrilled looks. Only a handful of them had the decency to look appalled by the show Siren was putting on - close enough to be heard even from here.

The light tank dropped his gaze. There was no way he would get out of this alive. Siren would be finished with the other tank any moment now, that was for sure. Why was he even running? His death was certain. But unfortunately, he was afraid of it, so every second he could avoid it meant another second where he wouldn't be in a world of pain.

Now he heard someone else scream; it was the E25 himself. But other than the screams before that it wasn't screams of pain - it was the blood frenzy that Siren was so well known for. One kill was never enough. Not even five kills. He was calling for the Covenanter to come out.

The Covenanter - the sixth kill.

He shook his turret. No, it was not too late. He still had a chance. He wasn't going to be the final kill. Not today. Enough mindless running. Looking left and right, he tried to remember where the flag was supposed to be. This was where he had to go if he wanted to get out of this alive. If he managed to hold it for only a minute...an excruciatingly long time in such a situation. But - he had an idea. He knew that he couldn't outmaneuver the E25, but maybe there was another way. It was risky, but what other choice did he have?

Deciding on his right side, he darted towards where he hoped to find the white circle that would mean his survival. Behind him, he could hear the E25 rev his engine loudly as he searched for him.

"You're only postponing the inevitable!" Siren whistled.

'No, I can do this' the Covenanter thought with grim determination. He passed through a couple of trees and could suddenly see the flagpole. Two wrecks were already inside the white circle – those had tried the same as he did and failed. He parked himself behind one of them cautiously. Siren probably knew that he was here even before the loudspeakers announced that he was trying to capture the base…another incredibly unfair mechanic.

Then the wait began. The seconds went by like hours, and his tracks and cannon wouldn't stop shaking. He tried to remember his plan. Shoot the tracks of the E25 when he appeared, hide behind the wrecks, hope for the best. It was so simple, yet so failure prone.

Siren had gone silent, which in its own way was even more terrifying than his screeching – because now he could be anywhere and the Crusader wouldn't know.

The thirty second mark of the capture was passed. The flag was slowly lowered down, not high above his turret anymore.

He checked his surroundings nervously, but bushes that were easily high enough to hide a tank as flat as an E25 and trees blocked the sight. He heaved a tense sigh through his vents, checked behind him. He could have sworn he saw something move there. If the other tank wasn't an idiot – and the Covenanter was sure he wasn't, based on how long he had survived – , he would come at him from a direction he wasn't expecting, like-

\- right from the front.

The Covenanter yelped. A shot tore through his armor, and before he could turn his turret back to his front, another one hit him. He cried out in pain, but his cries as he got killed before he had as much as a chance of shooting back were drowned out by the crowd screaming.

Siren woke up again, this time with a start. What a weird dream. Why had he dreamt it from the perspective of someone else? He shook his cannon.  
'How odd' he thought, 'I must be going crazy.'

He had to laugh at his own mental joke, which in turn woke up Fang, who then, with his yelling at Siren to shut up, woke up Tate, who just told them to 'get along'. Siren tried to explain the joke, but couldn't because he laughed too much, and getting beaten up by his Jagdpanther brother did only make it worse. It was already easy to tell that this was going to be one of the nights where no one got much sleep.

Really, it was just business as usual, and the E25 concluded that he wouldn't trade it for the past, no matter how much fun he had had back then.


End file.
